File under coincidence *Updated*

Watch the PA System get hit by lightning (repeatedly) as Rudy Giuliani tries to explain why his position on abortion is not like Pontias Pilate's position on crucifying Christ. (A short summary of his explanation is: "Well, yes, but I feel that an elected official has no other choice.")

Interpretation of Dreams

What does it mean if you dream about trying to get the poetry-book-guinea-pig hybrids (envision a fat Robert Frost book with little orange and white paws) off the floor and safely on the shelf (and in alphabetical order) before the exterminator comes to get rid of the horrible disease-ridden mice that are also running around the floor?

I'm hoping it means that you're about to get a million dollars.

Wipies

Another resident (in her early thirties) has very specific bathroom needs, particularly in the matter of "wipies" (baby wipes). Even when the supply is abundant, her hand ends up being substituted, and we have frequent sessions of removing the evidence from the soap dispenser, sink, towels, and so on. We talk a lot about germs, and about how ladies always use toilet paper (or wipies), and all the rest. She's usually interested in the cleaning procedure and proud of herself for doing it, so much so that I've wondered if there should be a slight punitive overtone to my manner. I don't want her to think that cleaning is evil, but it would be nice if she decided to avoid these sessions by avoiding the initial behavior.

One evening, just a couple hours after we had washed the towels and cleaned the bathroom, I overheard her in the bathroom admonishing herself in lively terms to "be a lady" and be careful of germs--but the evidence of the bathroom afterwards was the same as ever. Her explanation: "I lost my head!" It's really terribly cute (though I can't let her see that!), but I was still perplexed over how much of this was willful.

A couple nights ago I made a grocery store run, getting cleaning supplies (disinfectant spray and clorox wipes, both new to the upstairs bathroom, but necessary given how often it needs to be cleaned), general groceries, and wipies. I got the refills (far cheaper), and asked the resident to let me know when she needed new wipies, as I had gotten a new kind and needed to put them in the dispenser for her. She nodded and agreed, pleased to be provided for.

Now I should have seen it coming, but the next day when I found the old wipies box empty and the clorox cleaning wipes next to it, it was like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky. Thank God they were the bleach-free kind! I got the resident, explained that I had refilled her wipies, and that the things in the round box were NOT for people but only for cleaning. Some of my distress must have been clear, because she looked sweetly at me and said, "I'm sorry! I lost my head!"

I think she wants very much to please us, but finds herself in a world of baffling rules, none of which make enough sense to be followed. For now I'm keeping the clorox in the very back of the cupboard!

Eight Random Things about Me *Updated*

I was tagged for this meme by Mrs. Bear, who has been gently prompting me to resume blogging.

1. I sometimes know the day of the week, and sometimes believe that I do, but the two rarely coincide.

2. I just finished a Wodehouse book (Jeeves in the Offing), am reading a chapter a week of Community and Growth by Jean Vanier for a reading group, and just started the complete works of St. Teresa of Avila. The Wodehouse book has been pure delight—I’ve been bubbling over with joy from it, and am seriously thinking of cutting out all treats so that I can afford to buy a new Wodehouse book every two weeks or so. The Jean Vanier book is very interesting, but annoyingly fuzzy at times. Drama easily seduces him away from clarity of thought, which is Not Amusing in a Ph.D. of Philosophy. He keeps defining things, but rather than being a true definition, it’s simply one of many formulations that he grabbed from the penumbra surrounding that concept in his mind. The end result is that flights of inspiration caused by his seemingly profound absolute statements are restricted to no more than six inches altitude so there’s not too big a bump when he makes an alternate “absolute” pronouncement. I’m still in the Introduction to St. Teresa’s life, and am totally in love with her. At the end of her life, her doctor said that it was impossible to find a focal point to her illnesses, as her body had become an arsenal of ailments.

3. I’ve had to spend a lot of time recently talking about poopy and why hands should not be in contact with it.

4. The peeling skin from an enormous blister on my foot revealed peeling skin from the blister under it.

5. I daydream a lot, too (see Mrs. Bear’s post), but am entirely unwilling to reveal the subjects. However, in times when hope is painful, I restrict myself to impossible daydreams, which has in the past meant Life as an Intergalactic Superhero Happily Married to a Royal Werewolf. (The setup was provided by an actual dream that involved visiting Catholic bookstores—for obvious reasons).

6. I’ve lived in three different states, five different cities, and eight different houses (counting “living” as staying two weeks or more in a row) in the last year.

I’ll add the other two later (I'm assuming that I'll seem more interesting to myself at a later date).

I tag Helene.

7. I love watching HGTV, especially "Design on a Dime," although it makes me wish I had a lot more energy.

8. One of the hardest things about living in community for me is giving up freedom in the area of food selection.

It's an investment

There’s a number of new condos being built downtown, and they’re all trying to pre-sell the units—one even offers “Hard Hat Tours.” It would be a wonderful idea if it weren’t for the undertone of “for prospective buyers only.” I’ve considered showing up for one anyhow, but the guilty consciousness of subterfuge would probably lead me to such an exhibition of blushing, stammering, nervous giggling, fidgeting and toe scuffing that the striking view of the Seattle skyline through a grey mist would be immediately followed by an impressive barred window seen through heavy sedation.

Ads for at least two of these buildings promise that, if you buy a condo, you will be turned into a beautiful, young, naked woman the instant the ink dries on the contract. I wonder if they have an exemption clause for handsome, successful, devout men—why bother otherwise? But then, these men, being exceptions, would be a minority, which isn’t a dramatically pleasing setup (well, the folks who wrote the bizarre closing scene for “The Gnomemobile”—in which hundreds of young women chase a terrified youth through a soap-sudsy forest—thought otherwise, but even as a child I felt that these writers had, like Homer, slept). The best is brought out of men when they have to compete for a girl to be fond of, and rather the reverse when there are a number of girls being fond of them.

So I gave up the idea of stopping by the convenient Pay Day Loans shop in order to immerse myself in this transcendent and prosperous luminosity. Not so my fellow bus-rider, who wished to “buy out his roommate” for next month’s rent, and who stepped off the bus bubbling “Money, money, money,” after a promising call to the usurers.

Books and Movies Meme

Helene tagged me for this meme. I guess this means that I don't have to feel like a stalker when I look at her blog--though I have it on the highest authority that if someone starts a blog and doesn't tell you, it's only because they don't want you to know...

The instructions are to bold the books you've read and put an *asterisk* next to those whose movies you have seen.

1. Heidi (Johanna Spyri)* I think I've seen the movie, but it was some time ago.
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)*
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)*
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)*
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)*
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)*
9. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
10. Anne of Avonlea (L.M. Montgomery)*
11.The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
12. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)*
13. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
14. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)*(the old movie)
15. Chariots of Fire (Clarence E. MacArtney)
16. 1984 (Orwell)
17. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)*
18. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
19. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
20. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
21. Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz)
22. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo)*
23. The Robe (Douglas)
24. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
25. The Story of A Soul (St. Therese)* If you count the movie Therese, which I would rather you didn't.

Simple Pleasures

The all time best snack of the moment is dried tart Montgomery cherries (from Trader Joe's, of course), eaten out of an espresso shot glass (being the only shot glass I have because I'm That sort of girl).

Peace be with you

The street was dark with rain. A slowly blinking red bicycle light, then beyond it the neon yellow helmet covers of two men standing next to the wall. I glanced back and forth between the bicycle (which looked like it belonged to a student) and the two men, trying to remember if this always meant a cop, or if they were simply safety conscious, environmentally friendly commuters. My glance was carefully unfocused, as I’m learning the trick of never making eye-contact downtown. The policemen were doing an excellent impression of "The Men Who Weren't There." At their feet was a crumple of clothes.

I perceived the deadness first, then realized that this poor huddle had been a young man moments before. His head, covered in a bright orange stocking cap, was pressed deeply into the concrete; his two hands lay precisely on either side. His knees tucked under him as he rested absolutely in an extreme kowtow to a violent god.

Early Childhood Spirituality

One of my dear roommates from Texas introduced me to Maria Montessori’s philosophy of childhood and education four years ago, and I have been entranced. Montessori joins St. Therese of Lisieux in proclaiming the readiness of very young children’s souls for a deep spirituality. There is a Catholic program, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which provides curricula for children from preschool age through twelve years old. It is only because this program is so remarkably sound that I want to take issue with their introduction of the Last Supper to preschoolers.

In a Montessori classroom, there are quite a few projects which the children are introduced to over time, and which they can then go to whenever they wish. These projects are called Works. The Last Supper Work is a diorama with a long table, eleven little men and one little figure for Jesus, a paten, a chalice and two candles. The child goes to the work station, takes the objects out of their box and arranges them the way he has previously been shown. Children of that age delight in rituals and doing things the exact same way every time, and there are just enough details to capture their attention. In the end the little scene looks quite a bit like the Altar Work (where they get to set up a little altar as though getting ready for Mass.) If I remember correctly, the candles are even lit at the end. Then when the child is ready to move on, he puts the objects away and goes to another work.

Now the problem here is that there are only eleven disciples rather than twelve. The thinking behind the omission is that preschool children are really too young to wrestle with the problem of evil and free will, so Judas is left out of the Last Supper work. If a child asks why there are only eleven, the teacher is supposed to tell them, “Judas left earlier.” The problem here is that it is not necessarily the case. The Last Supper sequence in John’s Gospel doesn’t line up exactly with the synoptic Gospels, but at one point Judas is given bread by Jesus: “So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after the morsel, Satan entered into him.” (John 13:26-7). These are fundamental verses for understanding what it is to be loved by Christ—he always offers himself to us, but it is actually better for us to receive the devil if we want to than to be forced to receive Christ. Love resides in the will and yearns for the will of the beloved, and cannot accept anything less. Love is the most profound respect possible.

It seems to me that a preschooler is more likely to notice that there are only eleven disciples when other works have twelve than that a child would see the twelve and think “Wait a second—how can Judas be there if he betrayed Jesus?” And either way it seems like it would be infrequent, while every single child that does this work is having his imagination formed. Even if they don’t remember this particular bit of preschool, they will retain a strong impression that there were only eleven disciples at the Last Supper, which will make it harder for them to understand the reality of evil and free will when they get around to tackling it—and the grandeur of Love will be diminished in their imaginations.

The Shadow Knows

Today is laundry day which, as those of you who know me can easily guess, is a sacred day.

My uncle and his friend are kindred spirits in this matter. Their washer and dryer are not so much appliances as altars to the laundry gods. Never have I looked upon such greatness as exists in their basement back room.

In the basement back room of my apartment complex there is another grouping of washers and dryers. Shortly after I moved in, I did my first load of laundry and was astonished to find a full half inch of lint in the dryer. This was noteworthy even after years of dorms and community laundry rooms. I cleaned it out and dried my clothes, which came out of the dryer smelling of nothing in particular. This is odd, since the whole point of doing laundry is to luxuriate in the warm fresh-smelling while folding or ironing. In fact, usually your whole room smells lovely, even if you didn’t use fabric softener.

I ironed my disappointing yet clean shirts and hung them up in the closet, but by the next day they smelled perfectly foul. A horrible stale smell, part boy’s-locker-room and part homeless-person (similar to the man who sat down on the crowded bus proclaiming, “Ah don’t know if yer wanna sit too close, cuz ah don’t know what ah got.”) Unfortunately, I didn’t have dryer sheets and really didn’t have enough money to go re-washing perfectly clean clothes that just ended up smelling funny. And I wasn’t certain of the source of the funk. I live in an older apartment building, and you know not what evil odors lurk in the shadows of this building’s heart. Eventually, though, I pointed to the dryer as the culprit.

So I bought the strongest smelling dryer sheets that I could find, used Oxy-clean in the wash cycle to remove the old smell, and went on my way eagerly anticipating the fresh clean smell, thinking how lovely it was going to be to be met by little wafts of “Meadows and Rain” instead of horrible nastiness. I cleaned out the lint again (again thick, but not quite as bad as before), loaded in the clothes with the dryer sheets—and was met by the exact same smell. I can’t tell you how horrible it is. I poured out quarters like water so that I could wash ALL of my clothes, and now this. The lint filter was caked after each load, leading me to believe that the entire dryer has been packed full of lint by month after month without cleaning the filter.

There is no escape. The slovenly habits of my fellow apartment-dwellers have destroyed a whole bank of shiny new dryers. The neighborhood is relatively affluent and quite free of Laundromats.

I face weeks of going about my tasks at work with a junior high wrestling team as my intimate companions.

Desperate Plea for Help

I am running dangerously low on reading material. I've tried Sir Walter Scott, since there is so much of him, but found that there is very little to love in all that bulk. The library has a pitifully small collection of Stevenson and Caroline Gordon, as well as most other classics. I tried branching out into more contemporary fiction with P.D. James, but the following sums up both why she had to be jettisoned and why I am leery of further contemporary fiction--yet that seems to be all the library stocks.

Studies of a Contemporary Author

She’s like an old bitch who, having lost the scent shortly after being let off the leash, blunders on unaware that her earnest snufflings among the leaves tell her nothing.

All the pretension, none of the substance.

Out of her depth in the shallow end.

I don't think I'm quite up for another Mark Helprin yet, and my current library list (Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Dickens, Willa Cather and G.K. Chesterton) will probably yield about six books, after the library's selection has gone head to head with the list of their books that I've already read.

So please help me. I just want something light to read when I'm tired, and don't want to come across things about fathers and adopted daughters having an interesting experience in bed and then returning to discovering their roles as father and daughter.

A Diminished Helprin

Some time ago I wrote a short post on reasons to love Mark Helprin. My opinion of him has not changed, but there are also reasons to mourn when reading him. He is so close to being great that the sense of loss at his failure often outweighs the admitted beauty of his writing.

There are two reasons for this. The first is simply a matter of form. Because his sentences are often beautiful and always literate, he seems to have exempted himself from the need to edit. At times he seems to believe that if 3 yards of brocade on a lovely woman make a gorgeous evening dress, 30 yards of brocade ought to be ten times more beautiful.

But the second reason is much more grievous. From the quality of the language to the preoccupation of the main characters, his books attempt to be an homage to beauty. And a person able to write so well clearly does have some understanding of beauty. Yet he explicitly divorces beauty and truth. The falling off here is tragic. He of anyone ought to know that beauty must be true. Beauty demands not just a response, but love. And love is a relationship, a calling forth of the self to the other, refreshing and ennobling the returning self. If beauty is not true, not real, it is not other, and cannot be loved. It is not beauty but merely a chimera of false self-love.

If beauty is not true, we are trapped:

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

- I Wake and Feel, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Highlights from Ratzinger

Today was so lovely that the only suffering was finding that someone had marked up my library book with a highlighter. This has always distressed me, even in these memory-challenged days of occasionally highlighting texts myself. The difference is that those books belong to me, and my choice of emphasis will not necessarily be annoying others. I have even refrained from highlighting books that I own if I considered the book very likely to be borrowed.

But the previous borrower of this book, Salt of the Earth by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, was not so inhibited. Although the book is a delightful piece of light theology—and has already made me love the Pope more—I find myself distracted by the erratic yellow marks. Sets of words have been chosen, so it is unlikely that the marks were made by a monkey or a two-year-old child. But the choices—what is the system of thought behind them? Is there a system? The choice of phrases which are coherent within themselves—“right path” rather than “man on”—argues that thought was involved. Occasionally a new vocabulary word was highlighted (sclerotic), but that was fairly rare.

The following are taken from the page I was trying to read when I paused to write this rant (p. 24). Highlighted words are in bold.

This [a pagan religion leading someone to God] is not at all excluded by what I said; on the contrary, this undoubtedly happens on a large scale. It is just that it would be misguided to deduce from this fact that the religions themselves all stand in simple equality to one another, as in one big concert, one big symphony in which ultimately all mean the same thing.

…in the figure of Christ the truly purifying power has appeared out of the Word of God. Christians do not necessarily always live this power well and as they should, but it furnishes the criterion and the orientation for the purifications that are indispensable for keeping religion from becoming a system of oppression and alienation, so that it may really become a way for man to God and to himself.

Now the reader was obviously not simpatico with the Pope, but he also does not seem to have been deliberately perverse in his markings. These are also not the markings that one would make in order to refute the book. The first example does give the opposite impression from the text, but the second seems to be a highly conventional but pious resonation with the idea of coming to God.

Then the light dawned. The reader had chosen the exact phrases which, if focused on, would keep him firmly in the world of clichés, safe from encountering the author’s thought.

The other words may seem to have fallen dead while all the while they have been germinating, ready to bring forth their shocking fruit at the chosen time.

Spare Change

A panhandler was working the crowd at the bus stop. "Sp'change, man? Sp'ch'nge, man?"

A voice muttered, "Get a job." The bum continued on his way, and the mutter became a shouted, "Get a f---ing job!"

I have a job. I just don't have spare change.

In Fear and Trembling *Updated*

I went to the happiest place in the world again yesterday. I was extremely indecisive, limited by some budget problems and by the lack of kitchen appliances (though I do have a can opener now), so I spent a fair amount of time going to the opposite side of the store to return the can of hot cocoa that I really could live without, etc. The market was crowded to overflowing and its narrow, fascinating aisles were full of people, guiltily blocking the flow of traffic while they darted at the desired objects.

But there was one old lady who was entirely unaware of her hovering fellows. She would park her large basket firmly in front of a shelf, then spend a very long time pondering over each item on it. The ancient hand would creep towards the Chevre, then remove itself, then return, as if carrying on an internal dialog on how salutary the cheese would prove, entirely separate from the animating consciousness. She was parked there for two separate trips to return items that had been judged (after reaching the opposite side of the store) as unnecessary. The atmosphere of "Do you mind?"s and "Could I just reach here?"s was troubling her as little as it had when I dove after the feta.

I told myself to be charitable, that she probably would have liked to be aware of the people around her, but was simply too fuzzy to do so. God knows how often I've been in the same spot. But then her very nice old husband came over and she hit him between the eyes with a fishwife tirade. The subject that really brought the poison out was how he was standing in the way of the other shoppers. She told him in minute detail (but not very coherently) where he ought to be, and as far as I could tell, she'd lit on the worst place. I suppose that just went to show that he was so inept that he could stand in the perfect spot and still get in the way.

So at some level she had known. But the possibility of the weakness finding its source within her own self had been too painful to be supported. I walked away wondering how much my own darting about had inconvenienced the other shoppers.

New Place

Stovetop Fantasy

It was a wondrous feast. After five weeks of being in Seattle, I finally was able to go to Trader Joe’s. I used to shop at Trader Joe’s when I lived in California. After I moved away I would dream of wandering through those enchanted aisles. This dream was not the all time number one flashback to California—that was of the spot on the highway where one had gotten just far enough out of the hill country to be met by the beguiling sea breezes. But that was also the route which one would take to get to Trader Joe’s, so you can make of that what you will. These dreams of Trader Joe’s differed from other dreams of grocery stores. After I moved to California, grocery stores would figure as part of generally nostalgic dreams of my old neighborhood. And while I lived in that neighborhood I would have two-nights-before payday dreams which involved carefully investing $25 in the maximum amount of ramen, frozen veggies, and pasta possible, allowing for one long-term treat of pepperjack cheese and one short-term treat of licorice lozenges. No, Trader Joe’s is more a place of fantasy than utility—fantasy being a combination of delight, function and thrift while utility is summed up by a 50 pound bag of oatmeal.

The menu was of a peculiar character. There’s no point in routing the manager out of his den Monday morning to show me how to light a stove that would be replaced on Monday afternoon. Now it’s possible that he wouldn’t have minded showing me Saturday afternoon, but this is a gas stove which does not automatically light—and even worse, lighting it involves removing bits and igniting something called the pilot light (all attempts at envisioning what this means have been spookily similar to the final scene in “Time Bandits”). And since I have to drive myself to even self-lighting gas stoves with cries of encouragement, and usually greet the flame with a hop and a screech, I figured that lighting this stove would end up involving everyone in the building in a scene that I could never live down. So instead I simply looked for food items which required no heat (I am blissfully free of microwaves—you know that The Man uses them to maintain control over Americans hearts and wills). Further, the items needed to be easily removed from their packages and served, since I also have no can openers, bottle openers, or sharp knives. I do have plates (two sizes), bowls, glasses, silverware and a cheese grater.

Garlic-stuffed green olives, baby carrots, naan (one regular, one whole wheat), feta cheese, hummus, and jalapeno-artichoke dip ended up being the carte du jour. Delicious, nutritious, and breath-freshening. Dessert was chocolate orange candies and dried cherries, and a later snack to calm a querulous tummy was cold cereal—Quaker’s Corn Bran (also known as my favorite cereal for the past twenty years), which disappeared from the Texas markets years ago. It was only at the very end that I could get through the cereal aisle without tearing up.

Since I also have a job, I can proclaim that all good things have been restored.

Get Naked!

When I first got to Seattle, my uncle and his friend arranged for me to housesit for some friends. It would give me a chance to feel useful while looking for an apartment of my own. The soon-to-be vacationers invited us to get acquainted over dinner. They had a lovely house, surrounded by trees. The interior was pleasantly decorated with books and camping mementos. The wife was a gardener and the husband a philosopher, but he had intended to be a marine biologist before he discovered philosophy, so they were going to Central America to do a little scuba diving and underwater photography. In the summer, they hoped to go on a swimming tour of the islands off Croatia. The husband also loved cooking, and had prepared a hearty feast, homemade from organic ingredients. All in all, they were delightful people.

They decided that I was an acceptable housesitter, so the wife showed me around the house, pointing out the electrical box, water shut-off, and so on. As we went through the basement, I noticed a number of outdoor sports watercolors featuring mixed nudes. Then we got to the den, where there were stacks of signs begging us to protect nudist beaches. I started laughing because it fit so perfectly—the love of the natural life leads pretty easily into nudism in the Northwest (slogan “You can’t be too natural.”) The gradual dawning of the situation, beginning with subtle clues, made it all perfect.

While I was housesitting, I went downstairs to do laundry. There at the immediate right of the foot of the stairs and at eye level was a large, colorful painting of two very happy nude surfers. Across the top was the vivid legend “Get Naked!” Nothing could be less subtle, yet it had entirely escaped my notice. I looked around, trying to figure out if there had been a breach in the space-time continuum. There to the right of the painting was a short bookcase, overflowing with some of my favorite books. The Iliad, Emma, The Brothers Karamazov—it all came back to me. My gaze, originally bent on finding extra steps, had been attracted and held irresistibly by these gems in a suburban basement.

In my defense, I believe that I would have noticed a real live nekkid person, even if he were brightly painted and crouching on a ledge four feet from the floor. But to be on the safe side, if you need my undivided attention, get The Iliad, don’t get naked.

Clean Kitchen Clean

I spent the evening at Starbucks, playing on the web and having furtive conversations on my cell phone. When I returned to my uncle’s house, I ate some leftovers, then turned my attention to the other remains of the feast. Acting on the principle that nothing says “I love you” like a clean kitchen, I rolled up my sleeves and sent the dirty dishes scattering in panic before me. It was only after I had reached the point of no return that I remembered that occasionally a homeowner, confronted with a kitchen which ought to have been full of the signs of reveling, hears “You filthy filthy pig-slob!” rather than the intended message. I mused on this for a while, until I found that in addition to musing, I had cleaned the microwave and taken apart the gas grill for that extra touch that means so much. I finished as quickly as I could, refused to look for SOS pads, and ran to my bedroom to fret.

Go Greyhound

“I just got out of Walla Walla.” A deep voice began. “I thought I had another couple of months, but they just came in this morning and said, ‘Get your stuff.’”

“Man, I still feel like I’m in prison.” He was really looking forward to hugging his two children. At first I wondered why his wife didn’t figure in the picture, but after awhile he explained that while he was being processed by the criminal justice system, his wife was keeping company with another man.

The Yakima police were not highly esteemed by the bus riders. Their zealousness in pursuit of their duties was considered suspect. The deep voice mused that he hadn’t had any drugs in two years.

At a later stop, when the bus was fairly crowded, a newlywed couple entered. The bride entered first, calling out that they had just gotten married that day and would really appreciate a seat together. The groom followed, looking authentically bashful and proud and carrying all the luggage. The ex-con volunteered his seat, and once they were seated and reseated they introduced themselves.

On hearing of her traveling companion’s starting point, the bride—like a Victorian spinster who suspects a distant cousinship—started an interrogation to discover mutual acquaintances. “Do you know Larry Smith? He was serving on a weapons charge—they did something with the rape-type charge.” If I heard correctly, her own wedding date was set by the court, being the day she was released from serving 62 days at the city jail.

The ex-con returned to the subject that was troubling him. “Well, my wife’s really burned me out on marriage.”
“Yeah, don’t I know what you mean!” Heartfelt from the groom.
“Hey!” Outrage and the sound of a groom getting punched in the fleshy part of the arm. “Whadderya sayin’?!”
“Oh, not you, honey!” Genuinely distressed at this misconstrual. “I meant my first two wives.”
“Oh, yeah,” completely appeased, “My first two husbands were the same.”
Spirited and good-humored variations on two themes followed: Third time’s the charm and Three strikes you’re out.

The conversation drifted to a comparison of homeless shelters in the region. One received fairly high reviews because of all the classes offered (anger management, basic math skills, etc.), although the shelter showed too little respect for the basic humanity of the sheltees. It was a co-ed facility, which led to meeting interesting people of the opposite sex. And spending time with interesting people of the opposite sex led to wanting to spend more time with them—a natural feeling that the unnatural shelter did its utmost to squelch. One voice called for tolerance, since the shelter was a church facility, and although the others acknowledged the validity of the opinion, they felt that their grievance outweighed this consideration.

The conversation drifted to God. The groom explained that he had been raised Baptist, but as he read the Bible more he discovered that there were only two authentic churches: “the Hebrew Church and the Catholic Church.” So he converted to Catholicism. When he met his bride, she had never read any of the Bible.
“When I heard that, I sat her down and read her Revelations.”
“Yeah, I’d been consecrated to the black arts at age three—you know, the way some people are consecrated to the church. I was the seventh child of the seventh generation, so I was supposed to be the most powerful of all.”
“But after she’d heard the Bible, she didn’t want that anymore.”
“He made me give up my books, my wand, everything. I can’t see my family anymore because I was the seventh child of the seventh generation, and was supposed to be the most powerful.”

The groom and ex-con were smoking together and talking about the Church as I passed them with my luggage.

Spirits of the Age

When I was staying with my aunt and uncle in what is now called the Columbia valley, I rarely accepted their generous offers of wine. Partially I felt that their very fine wine would have been wasted on me—or when it ceased being wasted, I would be ruined for my happy-go-lucky impoverished lifestyle.

Now I find myself surrounded by inveterate wine-tasters, who are always looking to corner one with stories of something rather interesting that they found on their holiday wine tour. I listen with diminishing hope for a natural segue into dachshunds or the Iliad.

There is something essentially ridiculous in the proper appreciation of wine, such that the only right way to acquire it is as an undergraduate, floating in blissful inebriated companionship through an empty summer, entirely unaware of alcoholics on the banks and only too pleased to be foolish.

But as I am, having had no space for youthful foolishness, driving weary hours to spend money I can ill afford on too many liquids to keep separate in my mind, labeling “fun” according to others’ usage rather than my own experience—nothing could be further from a true enjoyment of wine.

Oh to be Free of Student Loans

This morning the bus passed a small sign which read, “Enjoy Saving Money.” “I do,” I thought. “Oh, I do.” I sat in satisfied communion with this kindred spirit for a few ticks of the clock until reality shifted, and the sign, standing in front of a furniture store, pointed out that it meant “Enjoy Spending Less Money than You Otherwise Would Have.”

Stranger in a Strange Land

One of my later (and therefore wetter) errands this Monday had been to drop off an application at a parish. The secretary met me at the door.

“Yucky day, huh?” she said, nervously eyeing the rivers of water escaping from my person.

“Oh, sure,” I said, thinking “‘Yucky’? It’s just fine clean water.” “I’ve come to apply for the office position.” The bulletin had read “Come by, tell us about yourself, and learn more about the position!”

“Oh, heh, heh, heh,” she responded, gingerly taking my resume while carefully blocking me from completely entering the door. She obviously needed to protect the vinyl chairs and wall-to-wall indoor/outdoor carpeting.

Then the door shut and I turned from my nascent dreams of getting half way thawed out and started hiking back to the bus stop.

The Return

I sat staring at the rain through the window of my ninth bus that day. A ten-foot-tall purple neon elephant was happily spraying neon water over itself, humming about nature’s drenching not being thorough enough. The rain which would have been sufficient to drench three states had been stopped over one greedy coastal city and most of that water had soaked its way into my jeans, where it evidently felt welcome and whistled for friends. The idea of resurrecting my blog popped into my mind. There I was, a single girl trying to make it in the big city, all the elements needed for a hit TV show. All that was needed was a slight wardrobe shift from “Wish I Were Warm and Dry” to “Miniskirt Grunge.” The moment seemed more dreary than dramatic, but the seed was planted, and we shall see how it flourishes in the Emerald City.

How to remain proud of your culinary achievements even after removing the lid from the pot.

Some humanitarian has been sending me spam whose subject lines urge me to investigate a new healthy way not to cover with shame.

I keep picturing a junior-higher at a party who accidentally continued talk/shouting at one of those random moments when everyone in the room (including the music) happened to be taking a breath. "And he turned his face to the wall, covered with shame."

But that's silly. Obviously, this is an affair of the stomach.

They probably want you to pay $19.95 for the secret (order now and get bonus "No Shame: Housecleaning Edition"! $6.95 value), but I will give them both to you for free:

What they can't see can't hurt them: always eat in romantic candlelight.

Bonus Housecleaning Edition:
What they can't see can't hurt them: only use environmentally-friendly 40 watt bulbs.

Novena Time

Just a reminder that today is the first day of the novena to St. John Marie Vianney (the Cure d'Ars).

There is another prayer request as well: a friend has discovered that she has a molar pregnancy, meaning that instead of a baby developing there is a possibly cancerous tumor. She is having surgery tomorrow, and has requested prayers. This is a very rare and serious illness but hardly ever fatal and there is hope for them being able to have children again after a year has passed. This was discovered today, and it seems like the obvious response is to say the novena to the Cure d'Ars for her and her husband as well.

Thoughts on opening Solzhenitsyn's "November 1916"

Truly, this is a book to beat off assailants with.

Has anyone else wondered if they would be charged with “assault with a deadly weapon” if they hit an assailant with their backpack? Really, the whole trial would swing on proving whether I remembered the hardbound German-English dictionary and Norton Anthology of Poetry as I was making my counter-attack.

I have a Ukrainian student with an interest in history, so I asked him about Solzhenitsyn. He said that Solzhenitsyn was famous but not popular: everyone agreed that what he said was true, but they were sick of him constantly talking about it. No one likes to be reminded of what they have done badly. Also, it is thought that Solzhenitsyn took the easy way out—yes, he only left Russia because he was exiled, but he forced the government to exile him.

His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is read in schools (because it is history), and First Circle is well known. The young man asked whether Solzhenitsyn had written anything lately, and I replied that he had a new book, Russia in Collapse, but that I hadn’t been able to get a copy. “Russia in collapse! Very interesting! But why would he say that? Putin is so strong. I mean, Russia compared to the Ukraine or Georgia—Russia is very strong, not in collapse.” I don’t know much about Putin, but the little I do know (a quote from an article he wrote shortly after becoming prime minister) is not auspicious: in regards to Chechnyan rebels: "we will piss on them!” Ask not what your country can do for you…

Then again, the reincarnated KGB carried out a successful assassination attempt on anti-Russian Yukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko—meaning by successful that they got him to ingest so many times more than the lethal amount without facing any serious retribution. ("Oh my gosh! I thought that was only poisonous to guinea pigs! I could just kick myself for having made such a mistake.") Not successful insofar as the politician has remained just barely this side of paradise (to be fair, he does look like he’s crossed over).

The student strongly recommended Suvorov (Viktor?), a historian of the second World War who was also exiled by the Soviets. I must look him up.

Prayer and Fasting

The son of some family friends was murdered a few days ago. A girl was also murdered at the same time, another boy was stabbed but not killed, and then the murderer killed himself.

The horribly public nature of the tragedy can be turned to good if all of us who hear about it pray and fast for the victims, murderer/suicide, and families of the dead.

The widow of a suicide was praying in the Cure d'Ars's church one day, and the Cure d'Ars (St. John Mary Vianney) came to her and said, "Be comforted. Your husband repented before he hit the water. Remember the altar to Mary that you had in your bedroom? Although your husband was a scoffer, he would sometimes join sincerely in your prayer. Because of this, he was saved." (This is a very loose paraphrase from memory). The man had killed himself by jumping off a bridge. The amount of time required for repentance is smaller than any measurable period, so there is hope even for the murderer/suicide who shot himself in the head.

St. John Mary Vianney's feast day is August 4th, so it would be very nice if we could fast and say a novena to him, starting July 27th and ending August 4th.

Link to a long novena, with a different prayer for each day:
http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/novena/Vianney.htm

I have been completely unable to find a short novena. If anyone knows of one, please let me know! Other possibilities for novenas are: a novena of Masses, Divine Mercy chaplets, or rosaries.

Below is an unapproved novena prayer of my own composition. I will try to find out if it is an appropriate or acceptable prayer before July 27th, and will delete it if it is not.
Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory Be. "O St. John Marie Vianney, please intercede for the souls of the victims, the families of the dead, and especially for the murderer. Please obtain for them the grace of eternal salvation from the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. May we all grow in love and trust for our dear Lord, who turns all evil to good, even the unimaginable evil of his own crucifixion and death. May the families of the dead take comfort in his cross. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen."

R and L

Today one of my Japanese students replied, "Oh Leerry?" to a comment. I understood immediately (hooray for one year's practice!), then mused over the girl's courage in attempting such a difficult word and the way that sometimes stereotypes are remarkably apt.

I shouldn't really find it so funny, having been rrr-deprived as a child. Even now I can hardly roll my rs, which was a great handicap a couple of weeks ago when I visited some llamas, who are irresistibly drawn to r-rolling (especially if one blows softly on their noses at the same time). But would Sam have been happy had I returned covered in llama-kisses? Hard to say.

But what has puzzled me is the fact that my students can make both sounds, but switch them. Recently I discovered that the sounds are switched when they hear them as well. I asked for written movie requests, and had several for "Gradiator". I don't know why it wasn't "Gradiatol". I have a theory (of course), but something tells me that it would be beaten by the result of some "Elvis Code" numerology.

Watermelon beverages

My parents visited me last Lent, and one of their primary goals was to eat as much barbeque as possible. What with one thing and another, we ended up at a barbeque place on a Friday, which I didn't particularly mind since I'm not terribly fond of barbeque. However, my meal turned out to be quite a feast--french fries and watermelon juice. Why did I go all my life without watermelon juice? It is one of the most delicious beverages possible.

Since that time, I have kept an eye out for watermelon-inspired beverages, and I just found a good recipe at Plato's Kitchen, a brilliant cooking-blog which also offers links to fake Starbuck's Frappucino recipes.

Thoughts applicable to the war on terror

It takes two to have a war.
It takes one to rape, sack, and pillage.
It takes two to make peace.

Therefore, if one party gives serious signs of having striven after peace, the mere presence of strife should not be taken as a proof against the sincerity of their efforts.

Locked out

Last night three of my people went to bed early, while the fourth was still out—much later than my old mother would have approved of. Mother always said that the early dog gets to tell the bird a thing or two. My particular person was the last of the three, and I let her help me make the rounds. She has better self-esteem if I give her meaningful daily tasks. Of course, I retain the truly necessary duties, such as sniffing for intruders, but she can turn off lights and lock doors. Tonight she insisted on not locking the deadbolts.

“This is very irregular!” I snorted, “I cannot recommend this course of action!” But she is headstrong, and must have her will.

Sure enough, just as I suspected, the doorknob rattled and the doorbell rang shortly after we had gone to bed. (Malefactors either ring doorbells or do not ring them—both scenarios require careful inquiry.) My person leapt out of bed, mumbled something about keys, and rushed off without a thought for the brave dog waiting to be lifted off the bed! When she came back, she found me huffing in indignation and concern.

“Ho!” I said, puffing out my upper lip, “Ho!”

“I’m so sorry!” she said, “Of course you need to investigate!”

I’m not blind to my person’s impetuosity, but even the harshest critic couldn’t say that she is hard-hearted. I had already begun my inquiry while she was lifting me down: “What’s all this? What’s all this?”

Then, Dat-da-daaa, Da-da-da-da-dat-da-daaaaaaa—I was off, epic music blaring and ears fluttering heroically behind me.

And it’s just as well that I went because, after careful examination of the fourth roommate (who was now in the kitchen) and the perimeter, I found absolutely nothing suspicious, which is exactly the kind of situation that a dog of action needs to look into.

I went back upstairs and gave my report to my person and my auxiliary person. They were struck by the rightness of my actions, and spent some time talking about it. I am indulgent of their chatter, especially when it is admiring. Deeds can be left in my capable paws, and I find their happy voices soothing.

Vigilance. Always Vigilance.

Food Poisoning

Ten minutes ago I gave myself food poisoning for the second time this week.

First, a note of advice to other youths stepping out into the world. Jars of spaghetti sauce when left to their own devices for three-ish weeks in a corner of the refrigerator, feel neglected and act out. Neglected cucumbers turn themselves into little Molotov cocktails of liquid nastiness, but spaghetti sauce is passive aggressive and tends to nurse its grievance in its bosom. Or, for it is but one and the same, to develop a fairly potent mold on the inside of the lid.

Cut to me, the famished wanderer from Walla Walla, looking for dinner. As when Trimmer came across the former Mrs. Crouchback, seeing that she possessed all of the qualities to attract, but failing to observe that she was not exercising them, so I with the spaghetti jar which possessed all the qualities of edibility while somehow going wrong between the mouth and the stomach. Trimmer took advantage of the situation (being the kind of person whom no one would attempt to attract) and turned it to his own advantage. I, on the other hand, poured the sauce into the pan thinking, “I wonder if I’ll get sick,” and then thought no more of it. A bit later I said to myself, “How strange—earlier I could have sworn that I was hungry enough to eat a horse, but here I am, only halfway through, and my stomach totally refuses to accept another bite of this wonderful food!” It was only 24 hours of not being able to anything later that recognition and reversal came at the moment that I decided to attempt to eat the leftovers before they went bad.

Tonight, I was eating the last of a six-pack of bagels purchased recently (that is, I can remember buying it) and thinking, “Mmmmm, raisiny deliciousness, offset with a mysterious tang,” when I happened to turn it over and found it covered in communist mold. As I threw away the remains, I murmured

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Note: 100 kisses from Sam to the reader who can successfully identify what I was reading in the three hours prior to writing this (roommies excluded).

Mark Steyn

Lately I’ve been enjoying Mark Steyn’s articles more. The New Criterion has featured Theodore Dalrymple rather less frequently of late (although, really, to feature him more they would have to rename the magazine “All Dalrymple, All the Time”), and I found that Mr. Steyn had filled the favorite-author void. The nice thing about his articles is that when he mentions people I have never heard of, I feel interested and pleased to learn about them (much like the man I saw in the ER who had been brought in for alcohol/vicaden/gunk-his-dog-found-under-the-fridge overdose—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a human over the age of three with a more pleased, interested, and self-satisfied expression). This is a nice change from the way I feel when the editors of that magazine mention unknown people. Really the only appropriate reaction to them is to slit your wrists in despair at ever having presumed to try to learn anything, and then write in the last spurts of life-blood, “Sorry about all that…aw…damn…presumed aga…” So anyhow, I found that my mental picture of Mr. Steyn was changing from an intelligent skull to a kind of kindly skull.

The last page of this month’s New Criterion substituted a “Dartmouth Review” ad for their regular nekkid-girl-in-New-York picture. Again, pleased, I looked it over. In the middle, I was shocked to see a picture of a lumberjack on his yearly day in the city. My gaze bounced around to something more congenial. Ah, Father Rutler, looking very fatherly and intellectual. Then, yarrgghh, mountain man. Back to Father. Finally I hit on the words: “Mark Steyn,” then “Keynote speaker: Mark Steyn.” Then … Good Lord.

There seem to be two things to say. One is that there seems to be much more of Mr. Steyn to fill the void than I had imagined. The other is that I’m not certain if he looks like a skull or not, since there’s a noble growth of bushy beard between him and the onlooker.

Mark Helprin

This review was supposed to be part of a "Reviews of cool books you want to read even when not forced" article someone was writing for the school newspaper. I got jumped by old mister migraine (sometimes he's coy, sometimes he's brutal), so communicating with my species was temporarily removed from the list of possible activities. I finished it anyhow, and thought it would be a shame to waste it entirely.

Review of A Soldier of the Great War and Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin’s novels are magical realism, which accepts as truth everything in the half-world of imagination that you feel is true but must remind yourself is not. And in that it differs from fantasy, which is only what you wish were true.

What this means is that a 20-year-old feels that he can out-race the girl he loves, though her horse is far better than his, the mounted police, though they are trained soldiers, and even a train—and he does. A teenage boy is terrified that the smutty pictures hidden under his bed will defy the laws of physics and burn through the floor, dropping to the floor below and into his father’s hands at dinner—and they do. A white horse escapes his master, and the exhilaration of freedom explodes within him, so that he no longer runs, but flies.

The greatness of the novels is that in freeing the world of imagination, intuition—which is also felt to be true—is freed and allowed to speak clearly. In the novel, a father is able to respond correctly when his son hurts him. The rational faculty might prompt him to forgive so that he will be forgiven, because his son didn’t really mean it, or because his relationship with his son is too precious to be lost. These are all true, but they merely surround the center of truth, which is that the father forgives the son because he knows that his son may never forgive himself.

And throughout, each sentence is a delight. Mr. Helprin clearly loves the English language and revels in his beloved’s charms.

Teaching

As I walked around my writing class this morning, looking for students with questions, I saw more clearly that my relationship with them was not that of a peer, but rather that for these eight weeks of the teaching-relay I had the enormous responsibility of leading each one of these different people through to enjoying writing and being good at it.

It is a very great honor to be allowed to give new writers creative writing assignments, and to be allowed to read their writings. Some of them take my assignments and make them their own, showing me anew how little of me and how much of each student teaching is. Today, a student showed me a tender and beautiful essay about playing in the rain as a child. It is a beauty that I will treasure, and far more than I expected from my assignment of an autobiographical story.

Why is Kraft brand fake cheese so much better than the others?

They got all the secret government grants during the War.

Something Beautiful for God

I’ve been reading Something Beautiful for God. It is primarily Malcolm Muggeridge’s reflections on Mother Teresa, but also includes a transcript of one of his interviews with her and some of her prayers. Here are a couple of my favorite parts:

Malcolm: You took [the poor] things that they needed.

Mother Teresa: It is not very often things they need. What they need much more is what we offer them. In these twenty years of work amongst the people, I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience. Nowadays we have found medicine for leprosy and lepers can be cured. There’s medicine for TB and consumptives can be cured. For all kinds of diseases there are medicines and cures. But for being unwanted, except there are willing hands to serve and there’s a loving heart to love, I don’t think this terrible disease can ever be cured. (p. 73-4).

It seems to me that this disease can afflict many of the people you see in an affluent Starbucks: bitter middle-aged divorcées, the successful businessman who bullies everyone, teenagers who were only read to by daycare employees. This is the disease of the culture of death.

But there is hope, and it is not in pity but in active love.

Malcolm: I understand that [love must be expressed in action, and the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing love of God], and even in this short visit I’ve sensed it as I never have before. These lepers and these little children that you get off the street, they’re not just destitute people, to be pitied, but marvelous people. Anyone who’s well can pity a man who’s sick. Anyone who has enough can pity someone who hasn’t enough. But I think what you do is to make one see that these people are not just to be pitied; they are marvelous people. How do you do this?

Mother Teresa: That’s just what a Hindu gentleman said: that they and we are doing social work, and the difference between them and us is that they were doing it for something and we were doing it to somebody. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in, that we give it and we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible. Because it is a continual contact with Christ in his work, it is the same contact we have during Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. There we have Jesus in the appearance of bread. But here in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and we touch him. [This is the other part, the greater gift, the harder part.] (p. 87).

These passages resound of Dostoevsky, especially in the Brothers Karamazov. Prince Myshkin (in The Idiot) and Ivan pity from a distance and destroy, while Alyosha and Fr. Zosima love by sharing the lives of others, and they redeem. The similarities are so strong that one is tempted to find out whether the Brothers Karamazov was in Mother Teresa’s library. But she didn’t have a library, and there’s no reason to think that this book was important to her. Dostoevsky and Mother Teresa both discovered the same and fundamental truth of the two great commandments: love of Christ lived through active love of neighbor in Christ.

The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty and disease. (From a reflection, p. 53). Her Home for the Dying is filled with people who were literally picked up off the street. She is doing the work of the Good Samaritan, who cared for the traveler beaten and helpless on the side of the road. But when she sees that those she serves are Christ, she sees the deeper truth of the parable. Christ is the Good Samaritan, but much more so he is the man lying on the side of the road.

Dostoevsky discovered this because—largely through his own fault—he was the man lying on the side of the road, so much so that almost all of his critics have felt free to condescend on a scale that puts Lady Catherine De Bourgh to shame. What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t matter how Dostoevsky got to be on the side of the road, but rather what matters is that once he was there he was with Christ, in pain and ignominy. He learned there that pity, helplessness, and disgust are fellow-travellers, whereas love sees only equality and the means to serve the Beloved.

Mother Teresa learned that Christ was lying on the side of the road without apparent humiliation—certainly not exterior humiliation like Dostoevsky suffered. She learned it by uniting herself to Christ in prayer and in the Sacrament. Christ gave her a profound belief in the verse that she references throughout the book: “I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, and I was homeless and you did that to me.”

Sam and comments

Feel free to refer to Sam by name. As someone who has to be watched while he does his duties (so as to be cleaned up after), he has no privacy. His name does not appear in his posts for the same reason that Flannery does not appear in mine.

Iseult of the Fair Paw

One of the other humans that lives in my house has a small statue of a baby lying in a manger that I take care of. The straw can’t be comfortable, so I am removing it piece by piece to make room for a down bed. The down will come from the five or six birds that I am hunting as a present for my mail-order bride, Iseult of the Fair Paw. My mother told me that my father gave her a whole dead badger when they were married, and that I couldn’t get married until I could give my bride a token of my love. I’ve already killed one bird and one rabbit, but both were taken away from me. My person can be so reckless with important things! I tried to tell her that I needed the bird and the rabbit, and that I would keep them under her bed, but she ignored me. Now every time that we go outside I check all the bushes for presents, and sometimes I feel like even a cat would do! I know I just need to be patient, but I’ve already had to wait so long for my fair-pawed darling.

But Iseult never whines at me, although I know that she is unhappy at her job taking care of spoiled children. She has a great soul. Her life, though short, has been heroic. She was orphaned after her parents’ tragic escape attempt and grew up on the streets of East Berlin. (I grew up on the streets of South Dallas, so we have lots in common). Her parents tried to tunnel under the Berlin wall, but were stopped by a horde of communist sewer rats. Husband and wife fought back-to-back, and they took out rat-squadrons by the hundred, but in the end they were overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. She always breaks down at this point, and I try to comfort her, but it’s hard when she’s so far away.

The waiting is the hardest part.

Crunchy oats and honey

If you lived in a communist country, what kind of granola bars would you bribe the officials to stock?

Bull in a Grocery Store

While I was at the grocery store the other day I noticed a fellow shopper who looked (and moved) like a frustrated bull. The store was unusually crowded, and every time he needed to negotiate through a clump of shoppers he seemed to be reminding himself that, although catching the unwashed masses on his horns and tossing them into the displays would do them no end of good, society would wrongly censure such a course, leaving nothing but baleful glares and teeth-grinding to relieve his feelings.

In general, he seemed like he was in a hurry, but he did so much back-and-forth-to-the-opposite-side-of-the-store-ing that I had been sitting by the door waiting for my roommate for some time before he showed up at the check-out lane.

He started issuing extremely detailed instructions for bagging the groceries, but suddenly broke off in despair and frustration, as though he had just heard the checker tell the bagger, “Okay now, if we’re really going to make this model of the Eifel Tower work, we’re going to need to use the bread and eggs for the foundation and save the canned goods for the final spire.” He ground out, “Oh, I’ll just do it myself!” and proceeded to bag his groceries very, very slowly. That is, it took him a long time, but he worked feverishly with fierce concentration the whole time.

When he was finally freed from doing the bagger’s job, he rushed over to pay, which also took a long time because he had to do it just so, and wanted cash back in an intricate breakdown of different bills (involving, if I remember correctly, 20 ones). The poor checker (whose line was curving around the floral department) got the money out quickly, but then had to count it back. The impatient man made “no, just give it to me” noises while reaching towards the money and making little “gimme” motions with his hand. The checker ignored the beefy hand fluttering centimeters away from his own, and counted back the whole sum (it was a lot of money, so he really needed to). The instant he finished the man grabbed the money from him and rushed off to be oppressed by inefficiency and incompetence elsewhere.

[Charity note: This post does not necessarily diagnose the bull's spiritual state. Motives and character have been supplied solely by my imagination.]

Motherhood and the Theotokos

Sometimes I come across people urging Marian piety because “she was Christ’s mother!” with no further argument required. And it’s never been very convincing because mothers tend to be a mixed bag. It reminds me of the Delaney sisters, who voted for Ted Kennedy even though they disapproved of his politics and morals. What was more important for a politician than politics and morals? His devotion to his mother. Their own undifferentiated respect for motherhood led them to vote for an all-around scoundrel because of a supposed regard for the woman who raised him to be what he is.

Consider the mother in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep. She is an avid member of both a society for mothers advocating widespread use of birth control and another society for mothers in favor of unlimited motherhood. She sees no problem with this—it’s all motherhood. There’s a great moment when, unsettled by her daughter’s waywardness, she accidentally begins reading the unlimited mothers a speech prepared for the eugenics mothers and nearly gets lynched.

And in general, mothers can be remarkably callous toward other women’s children. Addie Bundren (of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) seems to have hated her own children about as much as she hated other women’s, but hatred was something precious to her. The norm is what stepchildren often suffer—their father’s new wife is a basically good woman, not a psychopath, but she just doesn’t have the interest in the children living in her house that didn’t come from her own body. Usually it just means that she is not quite as patient with them, doesn’t get them as nice of food when her children aren’t around, is more likely to blame them for things that go wrong, and so on. Their motherhood is strictly biological and does not extend to other children. (I’m not going to talk about what stepfathers do here, but it can be far worse.) Then there are the mothers who kill or wound their daughters’ rivals on the cheerleading squad in a twisted version of the maternal desire for the good of their children. In the end it seems like you have to say that mothers are human, and as such sometimes Lana Lee is right—“Mothers are full of s***.”

But where does that leave Marian piety?

Look at Luke 11:27-8. A woman in the crowd shouts out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed the breasts that you sucked!” She is the archetypical proponent of Marian piety as given above. Jesus’s reply at first seems to be a rebuke at her focus on Mary: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” But as M.M. said at a recent Bible study, think about what he said. Mary keeps the word of God when she says “Let it be to me according to your word,” which results in her keeping the Word of God within her in the full sense of biological motherhood. Her motherhood, in fulfillment of her whole life, is entirely focused on the will of God. It is not directed towards her own glory or preference, so much so that she accepts the death of her son for the sake of other women’s children. Christ is not saying that we shouldn’t honor his mother, but that we should honor her for the right reason, a reason that will actually lead to honoring the womb whose fruit was Jesus.

And it is a fruitful honor. On the spiritual level we are given the example of complete surrender to God which we all need to strive for. On the physical level, the reality of childbearing has been changed since it brought salvation to the children of Eve, and should never again be seen as a punishment or an illness. In her fiat, the Theotokos participated in the Divine reversal of sin: In pain she brought forth a child who crushed the head of the serpent who had brought her the pain. And most importantly, Christian mothers are invited to give their own children the same freedom to do God’s will that Mary gave Christ.

The mothers in the first examples are focused on themselves, and on children only as an extension of themselves whose life and character they have a right to. The mother in Twilight Sleep is defeated when her daughter refuses to follow in her footsteps. Addie Bundren imposes her will on her children even in death in the gruesome pilgrimage she forces upon them. Their motherhood is an ugly thing.

But this is not the way it has to be, and it is not what motherhood really means. In a truly beautiful post, Mrs. Bear compares motherhood to contemplative monasticism, and it is clear that for her motherhood is like Mary’s motherhood: the contemplation of God.

Cuteness and Being

Whether the Infant Confessor (son of the Sapientiae Amatores) is more cute than energetic?

It seems that the Infant Confessor is more energetic than cute.

For he is in constant motion. Further, his short and infrequent naps are marked by a concentrated effort to rest as quickly as possible. But motion and concentration require energy. Therefore, energy seems to be an essential attribute of the Infant Confessor, leaving no time when he is not energetic. Therefore he is more energetic than cute.

On the contrary, the Infant Confessor is more cute than energetic.

For his constant energy is in itself cute, such that whatever amount of energy is added, an equal amount of cuteness is also added. Finally, energy is an attribute, while cuteness is convertible with being.
Therefore, the Infant Confessor is more cute than energetic.

Touch the puppet head

Is it legitimate to make up a meme, or do they have to be spontaneously generated? Anyhow, here’s my answer to the one that both Clashing Symbol and Mrs. Bear tagged me with.

7 things to do before I die
Become holy
Pay off my student loans
Write a book
Get a Ph.D.
Be imprisoned in China
Ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad
Visit Pope John Paul II’s tomb

7 things I cannot do
Wolf-whistle
Fly (despite years of trying)
Be silent in the middle of an interesting conversation
Keep food from escaping onto my clothes
Be entirely still
Maintain a savings account balance of four digits
Keep from discovering personalities in things (including numbers) around me

7 things I like about my other half
He’s so vigilant
He’s so easy to please
He’s cute when he sulks
[This is boring. On to the next one.]

7 favorite books
Money in the Bank or The Mating Season both by P.G. Wodehouse
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

7 favorite movies
The Royal Tenenbaums
Rumble in the Bronx
Pride and Prejudice (A&E version)
Conspiracy Theory
Napoleon Dynamite
The Disney Cinderella (this was when I was a little girl)
Horse Feathers (The Marx Brothers)

7 things I say
Right, right, right (Annie says I say this—I’d never noticed)
Well, I think…
No no no no no
Yup
...Sam...
That’s horrible! (Again, Annie)
Make references to obscure songs that only Mrs. Bear or Guy Crouchback would get (see title).
7 people to meme
No one’s left. I came out of my room from being sick, and found myself in a ghost town that all the cool people had left days and days ago.

They only do it to give us a thrill

I can't think of any explanation for this other than that they wanted me to start off my day with a heartier guffaw than is usually provided by the news:
Kevin Sites Reports
Gay filmmakers explore Israel's role as victim and victimizer.

God's gift to the unbiased press

Well, they haven't been good, but they get a little treat anyhow:
Hunter Shot by Cheney Has Heart Attack
It's nice to think of them clapping their little hands in childish glee.

If you read the article, you'll find these fabulous quotes:

Banko said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a pellet...

David Blanchard, chief of emergency care, called it "a silent heart attack, an asymptomatic heart attack. He's not had a heart attack in the traditional sense."

And if you read between the lines, you will see that although the patient was originally in intensive care, he asked to leave the hospital, which means that he is not actually dead.

The Lord giveth...

Close friends, Russian-soul and English-cavalier, have been trying to adopt for several months. The second attempt fell through last week, and they decided to focus on international adoptions. Russian-soul e-mailed their social worker, who responded at 9:30 this morning: they had a four-day-old baby girl whose mother had already signed all the papers for a closed adoption and left the baby at the hospital. Would our friends like her?

We got to meet Little Flower this evening. None of us had heard that it was in the works. What a beautiful thing it was to see Russian-soul with a baby in her arms!

Glory be to God.

Ninja hedge

I didn't explain the second example of the ninja archetype, but some people have thought that the young man quoted only said that ninjas (as well as giant squid and whales) were inherently funny. Attempted denials like this are just a ninja hedge. The example given is what we care about: a funeral mass over-run by regular people rather than priests should also be over-run with ninjas, giant squid and whales. Therefore the ninjas are clearly at mass, so it is another instance of the ninja archetype.

Temptation in the fruit aisle

I went to the grocery store today and was accosted by a gnome-like woman who really wanted me to drink some juice. I did so (ever obliging), and found myself in the checkout line, clasping a bottle to my bosom and trembling in fear that my mother would take the goodness away. It was only after I got home that I looked at the receipt, found that it was a $3.99/450mL bottle, and that I am now going to have to spend half the year in Hades. I'm not sure whether I'm upset about it, though--it was good pomegranate juice.

The Tactless Olympics

As a person who has gone through life with one foot thoroughly lodged among my tonsils, I'd like to salute the leading lady of Don Gately's recent post. I thought that I had reached the greatest height possible in that lofty sport (talking-with-foot-in-mouth), and was suffering from ennui. Now I see that there are whole vistas left for me to aspire to.

Ninja Archetypes

Mrs. Bear recently posted on that age-old feminine archetpye, Longing for a Sewing Machine.

This reminded me of something I've been meaning to comment on for some time. Sapientiae Amator posted about distractions in mass. A young man in his twenties confessed to wandering in spirit away from the holy sacrifice of the mass and toward the fortification prospects the particular church would offer, in the event that it was attacked by ninjas. On another occasion, when discussing the inadequacy of pre-Cana classes in most parishes, the same friend lamented that grooms were not properly prepared for the possibility of ninjas attacking their bride and guests mid-way through the ceremony. Indeed, it is a grievous lack, and is probably a significant factor of the high annulment rate in the U.S. church. But it was not a scenario which leaped immediately to my (feminine, sewing-machine-preoccupied) mind.

However, another young man in his twenties, developing entirely separately from the first, also revealed a deep-seated connection between ninjas and the mass. Coincidence? I think not. This is clearly an archetype for young men. In fact, I think that youth ministers should begin organizing ninja masses to reach out to them.

Sufferance

I know I'm asking a lot of my dear readers, posting two large entries (one huge) on the same day. I usually won't read an entry more than four paragraphs long, so it serves me right if you don't read them. But I would like to know what you think of the huge one.

(And yes, I did finish the rosaries on time. Thank you for asking, Mrs. Bear.)

The World from the Ground Up

Today it happened.

I’ve been hungry lately. People have been saying, “He’s a fat little bugger, ain’t he?” and my human got upset and started starving me. I tried to tell her that they were just jealous, and it is best to ignore them and be aloof. Or I could chivvy them up a tree. In fact, I’d like that. But starvation! She said that it was not starvation but a diet, but when I asked what a diet was, she said, “Well, it’s when you don’t eat as much food as you like.” I think that is starvation.

Another reason I’ve been hungry is that my person has been taking me for walks. She’s been really busy lately, at “work,” and she spends a lot of time sitting in an uncomfortable chair at the table, poking at the innards of a flat thing that opens up. I’m afraid she loves it more than she loves me, so I’ve been pensive with perhaps a bit of dignified sorrow (my mother said that we were Teutons, so we feel life deeply). I was grieving silently in the center of the living room, staring at my person and sighing a bit, when she suddenly leaped up and said, “Okay, let’s go for a walk and get the sulks out of you!” I was excited to learn that I had sulks in me, and I wondered what they smelled like. She put me on my nice long leash, and then walked me quickly all over. We even got to play in some bushes and low-hanging tree branches. It’s my favorite game when I’m on my long leash. I run back and forth and around and under as much as I can, and then when I can’t move any more, she comes and tries to do exactly what I just did, but she never pays as much attention to the fun smells as to my leash. We’ve been doing this every day. Then we come home and I feel hungry. Then my person gives me a little bit more kibble, but I don’t think it is enough.

My mother told me that when I was worried about being hungry I should consider the birds of the air and some lilies. They were once sent to a group of hungry dachshunds who were walked through the desert for forty days, without ever finding their beds and foodbowls. But they didn’t starve, because food was dropped from heaven—sometimes kibble, and sometimes the birds. Mother said that the same thing could happen for me, if I prayed with a pure heart and perfect trust. And today it did. I was standing next to a friend’s feet while he ate something out of a box (he likes to eat standing up, so I keep him company). Suddenly, the air was full of kibble (heavenly kibble, lighter and sweeter than normal kibble), raining all around me! I ate until I was full, and there was more left over.

Tortillas and Lovers

Two days ago I participated in a marketing study. I’d done it once two years ago—three hours in a conference room in the nicest hotel around, rating all kinds of things on a scale of one to ten, and in the end they give you $75. They don’t tell you what the thing is for beforehand. Last time it was credit card reward programs. This time it was three new kinds of tortillas. We watched commercials and participated in taste tests. Overall, both were pretty fun, mostly because it’s interesting seeing how the other half lives. (That is, people who make lots of money by shoving their souls under a rug in the corner). It’s also fun to apply Dorothy Sayers’ disclaimer in Murder Must Advertise to the particular people running it.

We started off rating our feelings about different brands of tortillas in ridiculous detail. How can tortillas be sophisticated or innovative? (Innovative jockeyed against versatile as the word of the night.) And even worse, how can one brand be more so? Most of the brands were complete blanks for me—I remember thinking of one “Gosh, they were really scraping the barrel here—if this brand even exists, it’s got to be in the Spanish-speakers-only stores.” Yesterday I went to the store and noticed the corn tortillas I used to buy in the good old gluten-free days—and it was that exact brand! Ah well, they never asked how observant I was.

Letting a tortilla company show you ads is like letting your date sneak his arm around you—before you know it, you’re a lot more familiar than you might have liked. Because of this, I knew that if I went to the store and couldn’t find my favorite cheap tortilla store-brand ($0.99 for 20), I would probably look around forlornly until I saw the next most familiar brand (the advertised one), and if I couldn’t see the price tag ($1.59 for 12), I would probably buy them. (Yes, I do have grocery prices memorized.) So every time they asked me how I felt about their brand after seeing the commercial, I gave them one point above perfectly neutral. Unfortunately, they interpreted this as getting to first-base.

They alternated questions about tortillas with questions about how we viewed ourselves. We were asked whether we liked change (100% no), were exciting (100% no), were spenders or savers (at the moment, neither), and so on. It was nice to have a break from trying to figure out to what degree the products advertised in the commercial fit with my image of the brand (Damn it, all I think is that their tortillas are a little softer than the cheap ones while being extremely expensive!) and instead answer questions about myself. But then there was the group of questions asking “Do adults ask you about [fill in the blank] more than other adults you know?” Options included vacation spots (Trans-Siberian Railroad!), makeup and toiletries (Don’t use anti-bacterial soap!), childcare and babies (I thought about this a lot as a child…), business (Er, well, business is for sucks), etc. But the question didn’t ask me whether I had good advice, just whether people asked me for it. And I realized that I’d been giving a lot of advice without waiting to be asked for it. I had to push “Never” for every question other than “Food preparation and recipes.” It was one of those moments when the veil between the self and the image of self is stripped away, and you have to stare at the drooping flesh under fluorescent lights.

At the end we were given the opportunity to give our opinions. This portion of the credit card market study had released untold animosity from the participants (there were 100 of us, evenly split between men and women). This time there were only 60 of us, and we were all women. The experiences were vastly different. In many ways this was a far nicer group to be in. Everyone was trying to be polite and considerate. There was a huge desire to affirm and be affirmed. However, the atmosphere became redolent of hurt feelings when “Why did you like this commercial?” was followed with “Why didn’t you?” And then there were the emotions.

We had been asked to circle five words that best described what we had felt while watching the commercial. Horrors! Really, all I’d felt was 1. interested to see what kind of shenanigans they were up to and 2. neither repulsed nor excited by a commercial that struck me as 100% predictable but inoffensive. The commercials didn’t give me any of the information needed to know if these tortillas really were good for you (96% fat free? What’s replacing the fat? That’s 4% fat—what percent fat are regular tortillas? That’s far more fat than regular bread.) “Interested” wasn’t even on the list. Instead there were things like “sympathetic,” “accepted,” “loved,” “understood,” “eager,” and my favorite, “in awe.” There were also the corresponding negative emotions. 95% of the emotions on the list were ones that only the high and low points of my life have excited. They certainly weren’t accessible to TV commercials. But, I thought, these poor folks have a whole page to fill with words—who can blame them for reaching?

But the tortillas were being marketed as healthy (with a hint of better-for-you-than-bread, though of course they couldn’t say that, since it isn’t true) and good for your family. The ladies seemed to have run the gamut of positive emotions, and were overflowing in their approval of a company that cares for the health of their families, and listens to its customers (them). Of course, there was even less reason to think that the company cared about the health of their families than there was for thinking the tortillas were healthy. Not that the CEO would go out of his way to run your child down with his limo. They were just a normal company which saw that the low-carb fad could be turned to their advantage since tortillas are generally thought to have less carbs than bread. They actually have quite a bit more—a burrito sized tortilla is about the same as three slices of bread.

The fact that these ladies felt so strongly about the welfare of their families was really good. Good for children, good for husbands, good for women, good for society. But the way that these good emotions were played upon with no resistance from the rational faculty was appalling—the commercial seemed to have come within a toucher of home-base with many of the participants. I sat in my chair, shocked. All I could think was, “Good lord, these people should not have the vote.”

Most people require a solid education to develop their rational faculty (I did and do!) And most women do not receive it. Degrees in mathematics and the sciences tend to develop this faculty, and most women do not go into these fields (a degree in traditional liberal arts is, of course, best.) And so the problem could just be one of education. Unfortunately I won’t have the opportunity to see what an all-male market study would be like. But I feel far more shaken than I even have been before regarding women's suffrage, and if I’d been asked to vote on it at that moment, I would have voted the right away.